APBorg and McEnroe played 14 times, but never on clay.My recent post decrying the Peter Bodo diktat that Roger Federer's Roland Garros win must have an asterisk prompted a lot of email and comments. Some came to praise me, others to bury me -- and pretty much all were informed and thoughtful.

Today I'm going to pull out one comment in particular. Boxingary, riffing on my rhetorical question about Connors' and McEnroe's best years in the '80s, put forward this thought:

"Do we take away Jimmy Connors’ great 1982 season and John McEnroe’s untouchable 1984 season because Bjorn Borg retired early?"

And speaking of Borg, do we take away ALL SIX of his French Open titles
because he never had to face EITHER Connors or McEnroe in ANY of them?

I must admit that I've amused myself with a lot of tennis "what ifs" over the years, but this one had never even crossed my mind. Borg being virtually unbeatable at Roland Garros was simply a given -- the sine qua non of any knowledgeable tennis debate.

But maybe Boxingary is right. Maybe we've all been too reflexive in our Borgian awe. Let's look at the record: Borg played Roland Garros eight times and won six. Both losses were to the dashing Italian with the pot belly, Adriano Panatta. This is not quite as impressive a feat for Panatta as it appears, for the first victory came in 1973 when Borg was 16 years old.

In 1974, when the Swedish wunderkind won his first French title, he had a reasonably straightforward draw, facing tough clay-court specialists in the semis (the diminutive Harold Solomon) and the final (the Spanish lefty Manuel Orantes). The hangdog Orantes, who would win the 1975 U.S. Open on the clay-like Har-Tru surface, was an excellent clay-court player but certainly not one of the all-time tennis greats. And he had Borg down and all-but-out, two sets to love, in that match when something went haywire for the Spaniard. Borg ran off the last three sets 6-0, 6-1, 6-1.

In 1974, Jimbo was even harder to beat than his girlfriend.The big question, of course, is what would have happened if Jimmy Connors had been allowed to play at the French Open that year. The 22-year-old Jimbo was in the midst of the greatest season of his storied career in '74. He would easily win the other three majors, all on grass, but he was barred from playing Roland Garros because he had signed up for the new, ambitious World Team Tennis. (French Open officials deemed WTT's schedule a threat to their tournament.) In protest, Connors refused to play in Paris the next three years.

This four-year exile from Roland Garros was Connors' prime, when he still bested Borg far more often than not. This included on clay. (Borg at this time admitted to being intimidated by the American.) Connors was a first-rate clay-court player in the same way that Andre Agassi would be 20 years later. He didn't slide but instead used rapid-fire little steps to get in position and hardcourt-style drives to knock his opponent off-balance and off the court. It worked well. Four times he won the then-prestigious U.S. Clay Court title. More relevant still: Connors twice thumped Borg on Har-Tru at the U.S. Open -- in the 1975 semifinals and again in the 1976 final. Aggression was the only way to beat Borg on clay: Panatta rushed the net at every opportunity against him. Top-spinning rally robots like Guillermo Vilas and Harold Solomon, meanwhile, got pummeled by Borg. Vilas twice lost in the French final to the Swede, in 1975 and 1978. (Borg skipped the 1977 French Open, when Vilas won.) Solomon seemed to lose to Borg every year in Paris.

Connors' dominance of Borg finally and irretrievably flipped in 1977 when Borg beat his rival in a five-set Wimbledon final. The Swede, now a more complete and confident player, pretty much owned the older Connors for the rest of his career -- and we tend to remember those later clashes rather than the earlier ones. But it would do us good to recall those early years too, when Connors was one of the kings of clay, even though he didn't make the trip to Paris.

It's much harder to make the case for John McEnroe at the French Open. He played Roland Garros only twice when Borg was in the draw, losing in the third round in 1980 (to Paul McNamee) and in the quarterfinals the following year (to Ivan Lendl). Because McEnroe reached the final in '84 and was a few points from the trophy before Lendl made some key adjustments, it's tempting to think he could have taken Borg on clay. But with his awkward, block-the-ball groundstrokes, Mac would have had a very hard time against the metronomic Swede. McEnroe was so talented that he could beat most players on a slow surface with his usual attacking net play, but that probably wouldn't have worked against Borg, who could hit pinpoint passing shots from almost any position. The two split their matches 7-7 over their careers, but they never played on clay. Connors is generally thought of as being a more limited player than Johnny the Genius, but the fact is, the older American had the better all-court game.